B-LOG SLAYING: Aliens: Infestation (DS)

After all this time, aliens are STILL popping out of peoples' chests

    I'm not particularly versed in the Aliens universe. In fact, the only Aliens thing I've seen is Prometheus, which is a tenuous connection to that franchise at best (despite that, I thought Prometheus was a good movie). I do love Space Balls, and there's that nice alien-popping-out-of-the-chest parody. And, uh, I enjoy the work of H.R. Giger. That counts, right? 
    What I'm saying here is, I know jack shit about the Aliens franchise. Yet, about a month ago, I spent $4.98 (thanks, Target clearance!) on a DS game called, Aliens: Infestation. Why would I buy such a game? Well, it was cheap. That's part of it. Also, I looked at the back, and the few little screenshots seemed interesting. That's right, I bought a game without referencing the internet. Not even once (I did after I purchased the game, but that's besides the point). I bought a game based on the back cover, kind of like people used to do before the internet exploded inside everyone's brains! 

    And guess what? It was a hell of a fun game! Woooooh, win one for cheap, clearance games.  

    As you've come to expect here, I'll give my thoughts/opinions on the game. That IS why we're here, right? I think I'm going to take the approach I used for my Silent Hill Downpour post, and go with a pros and cons list, and then discuss it. So, let's do it, shall we?

CONS:

• Very few enemy types
• Laughably bad dialogue
• Kinda boring, bland sci-fi story
• It's all just a big fetch quest (in the vein of Doom)    

PROS:

• Great graphics for a DS game
• Simple, yet very fun, gameplay
• It's pretty difficult
• And this could be looked at as a con, but for the sake of me trying to get through my hugely bloated backlog, it's a pro: it's a short game

    The enemies in this game become boring pretty fast. In the beginning, you fight some robots with guns. These are probably the most annoying enemies in the whole game, because you have to shoot them in the chest to kill them. But they shoot at you, so you have to duck, then pop up, get one shot off, then duck again, before you get blasted. After a bit, you find the "classic" xenomorph aliens, which are basically the enemies for the rest of the game. There are also small chest-bursters and even smaller little worm-like aliens. Towards the end, you fight zombies (the easiest enemies in the game) and some ape-like aliens, but about 75% of all the enemies are the blue HR Giger-inspired xenomorphs. It gets old pretty quickly. It's not a huge knock, but they could have expanded the enemy roster.
    The next problem is the least severe, and the most hilarious. The dialogue (and there is a fair amount of it for a 7-hour game) leaves something to be desired. Here's a nice nugget:

Hell yeah homie (ugh)

    You can find and recruit (I believe) 19 marines throughout the game, and each one has their own cardboard cut-out, horribly cliched personality. That's part of the problem. The other part (and this ties into the bland story, so I'm going to roll them into one) is just the boring dialogue. If it's not cringe-worthy social stereotypes, it's blah-de-blah cliche sci-fi/military jargon. Personally, I didn't need any kind of story. Or, how about this story: here's a spaceship. Kill all the aliens on it. Bam! So easy. Otherwise, the story centers around an abandoned ship teeming with aliens, and some government conspiracy to breed and capture the aliens to use them as weapons (spoiler alert!). Anyway, two minor gripes with the game, but gripes nonetheless.

Although this is kind of funny, making fun of all that military mumbo-jumbo

    The whole game boils down to: start in an area, explore, realize that many areas are closed/blocked off for various reasons (locked, doors welded shut, too much darkness, hot steam in the way, etc), find the data computer that generates the map, go to your objective on the map (which is most likely an item that will open up a blocked off area), rinse and repeat. There are six keycards that allow access to various elevators/parts of the main ship, and you don't find the level six keycard until about 95% into the game. There's a decent amount of backtracking and things like that. It does remind me of Doom slightly, where you have to find the differently-colored keycards to open up various locked doors. Overall, even this isn't a huge complaint, but it is something. 

    The cons are small and niggling, for the most part. This is a very fun game that I would recommend to Aliens fans, and non-Aliens fans alike. Here's why:

    This game looks pretty damn good. The character and enemy sprites are bright and fluid. The backgrounds are colorful and detailed as well. Here's a few screenshots I got that captured the cool look of the game: 

A starry background

This is one of the coolest backgrounds I've EVER seen in a game

And there's this to.

    The gameplay overall consists of shooting the ever-loving shit out of aliens and robots. Pretty simple, but also very fun. You have a pistol (with infinite ammo. Of course), and start with a basic machine gun. From there, you find a shotgun (which rules), a flamethrower (which kinda blows, but is mandatory to access certain areas), and a heavier machine gun (which is probably the best weapon in the game. I guess you could call it a gatling gun). These can be upgraded to be stronger, too (although each can only be upgraded to a max of +3). You get grenades, which besides their usefulness in blowing open vent hatches, are pretty effective for boss battles. If you use the starting machine gun (which I promptly ditched when I found the shotgun. That's another thing: besides the pistol, you can only hold one bigger weapon at a time), you can also fire rockets from it. I generally used the shotgun until I found the gatling gun, then I switched between the two (I killed the final boss with the gatling gun). I found the pistol basically useless once you start fighting the aliens. It's okay for the robots, but it takes too many bullets to kill the fast moving aliens. As I said, the flamethrower sucks too, and the machine gun is okay, but I didn't touch it once I found the shotgun. 
    For the most part, this game is a side scroller. There's one section where you are in a space-car (I guess?) and you have to man a turret and blast aliens that attack you. This part is super annoying, and it comes right before a boss; if you get killed by the boss, you have to do this driving section again. The only other part that's not straight running-and-gunning is a short section where you go outside the ship to access a different area that is inaccessible at this point. This is more of a platforming section, because you have to jump (usually blindly) to various platforms on the outside of the ship. No gravity makes you jump awfully high, and it's tough to figure out exactly where you are supposed to go, or if you can even safely land on a platform. 
    This game is pretty tough, if you ignore those two sections I just talked about, namely because I found them far more frustrating than difficult. Namely, the beginning is the toughest. You have four marines to use, and you can switch between them at any save points (there are quite a few of these luckily). But, if one gets killed, that's it! PERMA-DEATH! I didn't know this in the beginning, so after an hour or so of play, I was down three marines, and only had one guy left alive. I had a tough time dealing with those robots that I mentioned a few paragraphs ago. If I were to go back and replay, I'd probably not lose anyone in the beginning of the game. But luckily I ended up finding two more marines, so I had three for the first boss battle. This was the single hardest part of the whole game. I'll get to the bosses soon, though. The perma-death of the marines adds a level of anxiety that I think works marvellously. You sort of feel like you're alone on a dead spaceship with only a few comrades. The difficulty in the game comes from perma-death, the large amount of enemies (and how long they take to kill, until you upgrade weapons), the boss battles, and just the fact that you can't really dodge or block attacks. It's tough to get through enemy encounters without taking a little damage, at least. And I don't think it's possible at all to take no damage from boss battles. Since we are on the subject of bosses, let's chat a little about them!

FIRST BOSS (Bigger xenomorph)

    I don't think these bosses have names, which is pretty damn lame. Another lame thing? Out of the four bosses, three of them are just bigger versions of regular enemies (the final boss is just a bigger version of the first boss). Only one is completely unique (and he's the coolest looking, of course). Here's Mr. FirstBoss:

Lots of blue in this picture. Just a bigger version of the normal blue xenomorph. It's probably three times bigger

    This guy is a real bastard. I saw probably a dozen "Game Over" screens before I finally killed him (without losing any marines, no less). What's worse about the battle is the fact that every time you die, you have to run through a lot of enemies to get back to the boss, and it gets very annoying (truly, after six or seven attempts, I just ran past all the enemies instead of killing them). As far as his attacks, they are pretty limited. If you're close in front of his face, he'll stick his alien-tongue out and jab you with it. He will also whip with his tail. Other than that, he just jumps around. Again, his attacks are pretty tough to dodge (there is a dodge roll which comes in handy, but doesn't dodge everything). There are six or seven of those pods that spawn the little chest-burster guys. They are slightly annoying, but you can take them out easily. 
    My strategy was destroy those pods first and foremost. After that, I lobbed all six of my grenades at his face (his only vulnerable part. It flashes green when he takes damage), then just unloaded with my machine gun. You have to point it diagonally up to hit him. You can't just shoot straight (unless you jump on one of the platforms while he's still on ground level. I didn't bother with this). I would run up to him, point and fire some shots, then try to run back. I avoided a good amount of damage this way. After 45,000 (might be a slight exaggeration) bullets, he'll go down. As I said, I think he's the toughest boss in the game, so at least it's a little easier from here on out. 

SECOND BOSS (I call him Dicknose)

    The second boss is the only unique one in the game. He stands, sort of hunched over, waiting for you after that car turret section I spoke about above. He's about twice your height, and fairly menacing looking. He's an unattractive brown color, and he's bipedal (but he's got a tail. All aliens need tails). And his nose, well I think it looks like a limp penis, but I suppose you could say it's kind of like an elephant trunk. Just, judge for yourself. 

Hung like a huge alien

    You fight this guy in that giant room with the giant alien-robot (?) hooked up (?) to the giant laser-eye telescope (?) thing in the background. The cool picture above! Anyway, like the first fight, this one also has those pods that should be taken care of quickly. You have much more room to run and get a tiny breather/reload time if needed. He attacks with a slow punch with his arm and a high-knee thrust. He jumps around the room as well, which can damage. Finally he will occasionally spew green acid/vomit/bile-stuff. The strategy here is basically the same as the first boss: whip grenades at Dicknose -- here, his chest is his vulnerable area. It flashes white, and can only be shot with the diagonal upwards shot -- then blast him with whatever you have. I was using the shotgun, upgraded to at least +2, but maybe +3 (weapon upgrades are everywhere in this game). I ran, or rolled, past him, got behind him, and took some shots, before running past him again. This guy only took three tries, I believe, in part because I didn't wanna keep doing the car part, so I was extra careful. This is my favorite boss in the game. 

THIRD BOSS (Bigger ape-alien)

    NOTE: Between Dicknose and this guy, you fight another giant xenomorph, identical to the first boss. I omitted it here because, well, I forgot you fight it. But, you fight it in a power loader suit, much like the iconic one from the movies. It's actually kind of funny, because you find a key to the power loader suit, and you get a call on your com from your Sargent, and he says something along the lines of, "Keep that key. You may need it later". Literally the very next screen you find a power loader that you must use to crush a box. Yup, the only thing you need the suit for is to crush two boxes (one here, and one in a different part of the ship). You can fight the giant xenomorph in it, but it's a hassle. Anyway, for whatever reason, this xenomorph is more powerful than the first one you fight, so you end up blowing it out a air-lock into space.

    I honestly don't remember much from this battle, so by virtue of that, I'll call this the easiest boss in the game. He's a bigger variant of the ape-like aliens you find in the final third of the game. He's big, and he's damn fast. The fastest enemy in the game, for sure. 

This guy is pretty cool looking.

    He runs on all four (like an ape, which is where I think the similarities come from), and he bites at you. When he runs, he can damage you. He can swipe with his claws too. Finally, he will leap high in the air, off screen, and come crashing down. I really should have made some notes along the way, but I believe I fought him with the flamethrower. The basic strategy? Throw grenades at him, and blast his face with the flamethrower (or your weapon of choice). This is the only boss in the game where you can shoot straight and not have to point upwards to hurt him. I didn't find him particularly tough, because he will occasionally just stand around and take your abuse. His attacks seem a little easier to dodge than the other bosses. 

FOURTH (AND FINAL) BOSS (REALLY big xenomorph)

    The final battle of the game is against essentially the first boss, but pumped up on Marc McGwire-level steroids. He takes 450,00 bullets to take down, and has the same attacks as the first boss. 

Ol' Smiley here is no pushover

Here he is, killing the human antagonist of the game, with his penis-tongue

    This battle is a little different than the first one though. There are turrets placed all over that will shoot enemies for you. Yeah, he'll occasionally call down the normal xenomorph enemies to join in on the fun. These guns kill them pretty quickly, but it's tough to get them to hit the boss. There are also explodable barrels strewn about, as well as three levels of platforms. My strategy? Get ready: throw grenades, then blast the holy hell out of him with the +3 gatling gun. I will say, the gatling gun has 500 bullets, and that is not enough to kill him. Luckily when a marine dies and a new one takes his place, they come in with full ammo. I just ran around him, pointing up (ugh) and shooting his chest. Eventually, after more than a dozen grenades (across a few marines) and probably 1,000 bullets from the gatling gun, this stupid beast goes down. 

That's really funny!

I'm trapped in the game! Aaaaah! (jk)

    Then, the game ends about twenty seconds later. Underwhelming, to say the least. But, that's about all I can say for the final boss, and all the bosses in general. They were pretty tough, but were also pretty boring. They could have done a lot more with the boss design, I'm sure. Oh well, I'm still pleased enough with them. Like I said above, my playtime was a little over seven hours, and that seems just perfect for a game like this. Since there are so many savepoints, you can even pick it up and play for 10-15 minute stretches, which is great. 
    My recommendation? Purchase this game if you find it cheap enough. Mine was $5, I'd say I would pay double for it, but not much more than that. I'm sure it can be found easily and cheaply enough. If you are a huge Alien fan, you could spend more on it. I know nothing of the franchise, but from some of the things I've read, it has a lot of Alien stuff in it. I'm sure it's enough to please big fans. 

    Do you need one final reason to play? I've saved the best for last:

NAKED ASS!